


(t)rêve

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Three Musketeers (2011)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:48:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Just as long as they don't talk, Athos doesn't have to think about who he's with.





	(t)rêve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



Just as long as they don't talk, Athos doesn't have to think about who he's with. 

He doesn't hate Rochefort - he has, at least, picked his side and remained loyal to it - but that's not to say he likes him, either. What he likes is when he walks into the tavern where Athos is invariably already drinking alone, orders one for himself and then sits down without a word. What he likes is the way he takes off his gloves, so slowly and deliberately, looking almost nonchalantly at him with his one good eye as he does so, without even glancing at his hands. What he likes is those hands, as one fingertip traces the rim of his glass. What he likes is his mouth, as he sips from his wine. He's been doing that for almost an hour now. Athos has been watching. 

Rochefort tilts his head. Rochefort raises his brows. Athos understands the unspoken question that he's asking very well indeed, though at times he's feigned ignorance. He knows what he's suggesting. He knows his own response, though he'd like to at least pretend he doesn't. He rises, drunk, but not drunk enough to blame this on it. He leaves the table. Rochefort follows. 

He was drunker the first time, swaying on his feet and irritated back the fact of Rochefort's presence though not enough to admit it. When his drink was spilled and Athos found himself dragged into a fight, Rochefort didn't intervene, not even to arrest him; he just watched him from his table with a hint of amusement on his face. And after, when Athos stumbled out into the street several hours into the dark of night, knuckles bloodied but victorious, Rochefort followed. Rochefort pulled him into an alleyway and pushed him up against the nearest wall, palms pressed flat against his shoulders. 

Athos thought about hitting him. He thought about drawing his sword. He thought about _drawing his sword_. Then Rochefort caught his own bottom lip between his teeth to try unsuccessfully to hide a smile, and Athos grimaced at him. In the half light, the bastard almost seemed handsome. In the half light, he could almost pretend he wasn't who he knew he was. 

Rochefort swallowed, and Athos watched the shift of his Adam's apple above the collar of his doublet. Rochefort shifted, pressing one hand to the wall instead of at Athos's shoulder. He came closer. He stopped smiling. And, in the end, just to break the tension, Athos yanked him forward by the back of his neck and applied his lips to his. Athos kissed him on the mouth. Rochefort, to his great surprise, returned that kiss enthusiastically. 

Rochefort has excellent rooms in a style to which Athos in a former life might once have been accustomed, but they didn't go there. Athos and the other shad their boarding house, but they didn't go there. That night, they didn't even leave the alley. Athos twisted the queue of Rochefort's long hair around his palm and pulled away just long enough to pull the glove from his free hand with the use of his teeth, then he applied that hand to the front of Rochefort's breeches, squeezing firmly. Rochefort groaned out loud and then returned the favour. An unspecified number of minutes afterwards, they left the alleyway one after the other, a dishevelled mess, with not a single word about it. 

He didn't think about it afterwards. he put it out of his mind almost entirely, until one night Rochefort entered the tavern without a sign of his men there in support. Rochefort joined him without asking his permission. Athos, for his part, did not send him away. Later, when they left together, Rochefort led the way and Athos let him, just drunk enough that he didn't think to protest. He didn't question whose rooms they ended up in, whose wine they drank, whose mattress they shared. When Rochefort pushed him down flat upon his back and stripped his breeches to mid-thigh, when Rochefort stroked his cock for him till he was hard then licked him, sucked him, made him groan, those questions seemed to lack importance. In the months that have passed, he still hasn't asked, but he suspects that Rochefort rents them just for this. He hasn't asked if there was another there before him. 

Tonight, there was none of that. When Athos arrived, Rochefort was fighting in the street, set upon by drunken thugs, so Athos drew his sword without a second thought and stepped into the fight to aid him. They fought back to back. It was over very quickly and when Rochefort sheathed his sword again and looked at him, a question on his face, they left together. Athos's strides are longer than Rochefort's but he slowed them until their paces matched and they moved on, the king's musketeer and the cardinal's guard. They made their way to the boarding house where everyone knows to hold their tongue and keep their distance and they went up the stairs to the rooms that Rochefort rents. 

Earlier, eating at a table with Porthos and Aramis, they saw Rochefort and Jussac and a number of their men pass by. 

"Never trust a man without a mistress, I say," Porthos said, around a mouthful of pork. He frowned and gestured at Athos. "No offence. Present company and all that." 

Athos shrugged it off, but the judgement has stayed with him because part of what Porthos said is true: Rochefort, by all accounts, has no mistress. Porthos has. Aramis, naturally, has a string of them. But not Athos, and not Rochefort. 

Tonight, Rochefort undressed and let his hair down around his shoulders, kinked from the tie in an ear-high horseshoe about his head, and Athos tangled the fingers of both hands in it. They went to bed and Athos took off Rochefort's eye patch and pressed his mouth to the brow above. He still has his eye, though it's scarred and blind and Athos supposes the patch is more palatable for the cardinal, and the court besides. Athos, on the other hand, has seen far worse over the years. 

They kissed, naked, against the limewashed wall, Athos's hands roving Rochefort's bare skin as he pressed him back with his body against his. They went to the bed and Rochefort pushed him down. Rochefort knelt between his thighs, knees spread, erect. He had his eyes on him, both of them, both the blind one and the sighted, his cheeks almost as flushed as his cock between his legs. Rochefort raised his brows. Athos nodded yes. 

And after, once they'd washed and dressed, doublets buttoned, hats in hands, Rochefort turned to leave. 

"Rochefort," Athos says now, and Rochefort turns, brows raised, surprised he's spoken. 

"Yes?" he replies. 

Athos rises, his sword clattering against the frame of the bed, but neither man's attention is drawn by it. 

"Tonight," he says. "I'll meet you here." 

Rochefort nods. He heads to the door, opens it, but turns within the frame. 

"Athos," he says. 

"Yes?"

"Now we're speaking, there's something I should tell you." 

"Oh?"

He half smiles, amused. "I prefer you like this," he says. 

"Like what, exactly?"

He gestures at him with one gloved hand. "Sober enough to remember." Then he leaves him there, and Athos laughs out loud. 

He doesn't hate Rochefort. He's perhaps not a truly good man, but neither is any other man of his acquaintance, immediate or more remote. And, as he leaves and locks the door behind him, Athos wonders to himself if conversation will truly be the end of this, of it it will be something else entirely. 

For once, he looks forward to finding out.

**Author's Note:**

> Title a bit of French nonsense: trêve = truce; rêve dream.


End file.
